Invictus
by Ambivalent Anonymous
Summary: Hunter was captured by Hydra 5 months ago. The team has no idea where he is, until suddenly they do. Hunter is not who he used to be. He's broken, and its up to the team to put him back together
1. Chapter 1

Shivering. Always shivering, accompanied by a never ending, all consuming darkness. And pain, a sharp agony gnawing on his every nerve until he was nothing but a chewed up mess of shredded skin.

Breathing hurt. No, hurt couldn't even begin to describe the pure, relentless torture that was such a simple act. Breathing meant living, he kept reminding himself in the monotone that can only be heard in the voice of one who reeks of hopelessness. Yes, breathing meant living, but living meant hoarse screams and silent pleads and cruel laughter.

So why was he still enduring this, why bother sucking in ragged, pitiful wheezes of this deadly stale air? Why? Why why why wh-

The door slammed open, sending a resounding clank throughout the silence as steel meant stone. A rush of cold air swirled in, tickling his thick nest of a beard he had not been permitted to shame. It was the only indication he had of how long he had been here, as he stared dully at its unruly curls. The very presence of it taunted him, a stark, cruel reminder of the days gone by that he had not been rescued, that'd he'd be stuck in here until his heart simply withered up and gave out.

Time had no place here, and days seemed to simply melt into one another with the sound of his thrashing and pain. That he had been here for what seemed like an eternity was a fact his captors simply reveled in taunting him with, their cruel words cutting into his pale flesh like the sharp sting of a whip, each malicious truth told tearing him apart piece by piece until he snapped, reduced to something pathetic. He never felt more ashamed of his disgusting self than when he begged, as if he was something not even human anymore, totally at the mercy of men with fire raging an immortal flicker in their eyes.

He once again was yanked from the safety of his eternal depression by the cooing of his name and gentle fingers stroking his tear streaked face in a mockery of tenderness.  
He had completely forgotten about the door opening. Honestly, he found himself not caring either .

"Hunter, Hunter dear, we have company. Aww, don't give me that look, it makes you look ugly- well uglier than you already are, that is. Now, my dear hunter, these guests are very important, and believe it or not, they're here to see you!" Remy crawled. Remy was his least favourite of all his captors. He was unpredictable, one moment petting his hair and whispering words of comfort to him, the next stabbing him with syringes and spitting on his face for looking like he actually believed him.

"I'm nothing. I am ugly and unlovable, and deserve to be hurt. I thank you for giving me what I deserve," he had long since lost track of the times he'd been forced to repeat that statement. Whenever he messed up, rather it be screaming too loud and hurting their ears or not screaming loud enough, they'd punish him accordingly and then proceed to have him repeat the chant until his throat was scraped raw and nothing but a low pitched whine would manage to escape his parched lips. Sometimes in the midst of the process, he'd feel his lower lip begin to tremble, and his vision of the ugly faces laughing down at him would blur as salty traitors clawed down his face.

"Okay." Was all he said in reply to man staring down at him, something akin to disappointment present in his orb. Cleary he had been hoping for him to ask who the guests were.

His apathy was quickly met with a harsh slap to the face. He barely even registered the tingling pain.

"God. You're such a brat, has anyone ever told you that?"

He swallowed lifelessly. "Yes." He wasn't lying. He'd been reminded of this truth just yesterday, in fact.

Remy stared at him for a moment longer before shaking his head and continuing, "You know who came to see you, ugly? You're 'friends,'" he spat the word as if even toying with the idea that something as vile as him could ever have people care about him. "Boss and I decided to let you go. Actually, our plan has always been to let you go when could on came to collect you. We just didn't take into account how much he abhors you and that it would take 5 months. But, I mean, can you blame the msn? Who'd want you back?"

He laughed out loud, a boisterous guffaw before spitting on his face. Hunter just stared, his face portraying the hollow emptiness he felt inside. He lad long sense given up on ever seeing his ragtag family, and he had no reason to believe any different now. This was just another cruel trick of Remy's, designed to fill him with hope simply to crush it moments later. No. He may be useless and unlovable, but he wasn't stupid.

" Get up, you useless piece of crap! I said GET UP!" Not wanting to test His mood swings, Hunter shaking moved to stand up, only to tumble into a heap on the ground, crying out in pain as his aching ribs were jostled. He tried again, but his limbs might as well have been made of jello.

"God you're useless! You're truly pathetic, did you know that?" And as if carrying the weight of the world's annoyances on his stocky shoulders, Remy let out a huff of air before grabbing Hunter from beneath his armpits and dragging his bare flesh across the rugged terrain of the stone floor.

The two carried on this way for some time down the dim halls before entering a room. The light that assaulted his face had him hissing along with the formation of a new headache he was prepared to nurse. It had been months since he'd seen anything but darkness.

However, his train of thought came screeching to a halt at the next voice that filled his airs. A voice so, so familiar, yet so foreign. He dared not look up. Being wrong would crush him in a way that would leave him irreparable.

"Hunter? Oh, god-"

It was the undeniable putrid smell and sound of one stretching that finally propelled him to steal a glance above from his place on the floor-

And there, staring at him with identical expressions of horror and disgust, stood his team


	2. Chapter 2

"Surrender now, and you won't have to get hurt," Coulson deadlines, Icer staring at the creases between its target's furrowed brows.

He was a petite man of stocky build, waves of muscles rippling down the length of his arms. A smug smirk stretched lazily across his rosy face, sending chills down Coulson's spine. This man radiated creepiness.

"Oh my, my. Do be patient, I don't attend to run. Trust me." At this, his smirk broke out into a full out grin of crooked teeth. Jagged criss crossed lines danced across the corners of his eyes as they crimped up in pure ecstasy.

Coulson hesitated, his finger cartwheeling on fate's borders as it brushed against the trigger. Something was wrong,very very wrong.

"And! Just to prove I surrender to your gracious mercy with no could intentions, I offer you a gift, a rather useless one, I might add, but nonetheless, a gift. You don't have to accept, no pressure, it is pretty disgusting." Wrinkles folded over themselves on the small folds of his nose as his look of sadistic joy was replaced by one of disgust.

"What are you talking about?" He could feel the eyes of his team burning into his skull, their anxiety and eagerness nipping at his heels like a pack of crazed dogs. They had only attended to raid the hydra base he had been anonymously tipped off of. This was turning into something far darker and creepier than the determined apathy packed in each of their internal hard drives had the ability to deal with.

"Why I don't I go fetch it for you?" And before he had time to so much as even blink, the man tore off down the hall.

"Something's not right with him. I mean, I even for a hydra loon," Skye quipped, her words digesting the tense silence in a crumbly display of desperation.

"Agreed, and what did he mean by-"

His sentiment was cut off by Mack's booming drawl, " Bobbi, what's wrong?"

Bobbi was staring off ahead, a blurry mix of deep concentration and internalized distance swirling wistfully in her eyes. Slowly, she seemed to come back to reality, with what appeared to be a great struggle, only to confront six pairs eyes watching her.

"You okay, Bobbi?" Skye asked hesitantly.

"Huh? Oh, um. Yes. Yeah, I'm just fine. It's just... the way he talked about this, this 'gift,' he almost made it sound like... like a person," she chewed her bottom lip anxiously, a nervous tick she only ever did when every sense within her screamed off warning bells. The pit of her stomach felt hollowed and raw. Yes, something wasn't right at all.

Skye laughed a small, pitiful mockery of a laugh. "A person? That's a bit of a huge stretch from gift, don't you think?" Hope and denial intertwined with one another with the grace and ease of the winds roaring their presence on the outside as Skye attempted to grasp the implications of what Bobbi had suggested. She seemed to be trapped in the waves of her own horror before continuing, "besides, who would he want to... give to us anyway?"

All of a sudden, a monster of a thought clawed its way into the vacancy of Bobbi's mind, leaving vicious scratches of blood in its wake. A thought so horrible, so unspeakably horrifying, she found herself unconsciously gripping her stomach, as if the action could somehow manage to fend of this demon and all of the terror that lurked with it.

Just then everyone was unanimously yanked from their thoughts as the door was kicked open with loud thud and groan pain. Their creepy friend had returned, it had seemed, dragging with him a lifeless body, except for the occasional grunt or twitch.

She arched her neck, straining to get a better look at the body being dumped rather unceremoniously beneath them-

And that's when her entrails lurched, tangling together in painfully tight knots as she found her self crumbling to the stone floor, vomiting and sputtering and shivering like a shriveled up leaf dangling by a lone thread to the tree and roots that gave it life, teetering on the edge of being blown away, somewhere far, far away where she could simply lie down and sob, because she knew that lifeless body. She knew that beautiful face and suddenly she was free falling, spiralling into a never ending dark and eternal hopelessness, everyone she knew and loved became nothing more than faded faces, empty shouts as she just kept falling falling falling, unable to escape the twisted reality that choked the every last breath from her.

And then just as quickly as she began her relentless somersault into despair, she was pulled out by a single word, voiced in nothing more than a small, wobbly whisper.

"Bobbi?"

Her head snapped up from the view of the chunky green slime she had just propelled from her stomach.

He was staring at her, wide saucer pan eyes illuminated by circles of deep purple and a deathly grey pigment held up open miles of distrust and hurt and betrayal and joy. Tears were streaming in a slow steady down the shallow gauntness of his face.

That's all it took to end her stupor, seeing this once proud man gaze at from a piled heap on the floor with such raw, conflicted emotions and pain. He didn't need her sobbing and retching, he needed her help, badly.

Compartmentalizing Her Everest of current feelings, she darted over to his shivering form. Upon closer expectation, she gasped: his body had become a canvas of injuries, splotchy shades of ghastly yellow and blistering, lines of shallow and deep alike oozed a rich red, staining the skin breathless it trudged to an alarming puddle on the ground, various degrees of grotesque burns shaped themselves around the jagged scars licking any trace of bare skin off, all painting an illustration of pain and misery.

She shunned all of the outside world out until the background noise became nothing but a buzz of whispers. Coulson had shot the man with the Icer immediately upon the morbid train of thought they had all boarded, and was currently in the grueling process of singlehandedly dragging his mass back to the Bus.

Mack stood dormant, eyes glazed and mouth slightly slacking. His every muscle was shaking uncontrollably. He seemed paralyzed on the spot, as if moving would confirm that this was actually reality, and not a mortifying dream like they all longed for it to be.

Skye stood over to the side, a poster face for horror. Her hand covered her mouth while streams of salty tears rushed down her paled face,

"B-b-b-ob."

His voice again, this one interrupted by the rage of a coughing fit that racked through his limp body, propelling phlegm and gooey chunks of blood splatters in the process.

She knelt beside him, placing a comforting on his head. It took all of her will power not to yank it immediately off in shock. He was burning in a heat she had never in her life , beads of sweat swelling through his peers and clinging to her skin.

It was clear as the baby blue skies boasting its beauties the day before, when everyone was still right in the world and she wasn't crumbling bit by bit Nina matter of seconds while her fair shook her back in forth in a rushed motion of anger, and before the storms that dictated them today took over.

Lance Hunter, was dying in her arms.

She whipped her head around in a fluid motion of unleashed determination and rage like she'd never felt before.

"Don't just stand there! Can't you see he needs help?! Go get a stretcher, and tell Fitzsimmons to prepare the med wing!" She yelled at neither Skye nor Mack in particular. They both jumped before staring guilty at each other and running off.

She turned back to the injured man in front of her and felt the life being yanked from her soul like a tooth tied to a door handle.

For in front of her, Lance Hunter lie completely still, as his chest rose one final time, and then nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

He woke to the sound of sobbing, gut wrenching gasps full of such anguish, it all but lulled his eyelids back into a state of sleep. Everything ached, but not in the manner he had come to expect with his every waking breath these past few months. No, that pain was roaring fires and billowing puffs of dark smoke, eating away at his very being until he was a charred, sorry excuse for a human.

This, this was small wisps flowing gently across his nerve endings with a grace as to just barely remind him that it was still there, dulled by an icy relief streaming through his veins.

His throat was agonizingly raw, and he longed for water so desperately. 'Just a small drop, that's all I need, just a drop,' he thought pleadingly.

Yet, as much as his captors might like to say otherwise, Hunter was not a stupid person, and he knew such a necessity would not be given so generously.

"Wa-wa-wa-ah," he stuttered pathetically, voice raw from screaming, "wa-ah. P-p-p-lease."

A gasp penetrated the silence of his cell, and he tensed in preparation of the pain that would surely follow any second. He had spoken out of term and now they were angry, so very angry, their rage would make itself known by the welts of scabs on his back and deeps swirls of red of his face and the empty cage rattling in the internal winds of want as they starved him -

"Hunter."

His eyes snapped open with such a force that the miniscule scratch resting on the delicate dent of his eye lids split open and a small trail of blood oozed down towards his fearfully wide eyes, because this was not his cell, and those were not his captors.

The walls were not hopelessly grey and rough, but instead a blinding shimmer of tiled white. Hospital. He was in a hospital, somehow-

The memories came flooding back to him as if someone had tossed a tub of ice on him. The team, they had rescued him, saved him from the confinement of his hell-hole.

"Hunter, you are in a hospital at a S.H.I.E.L.D facility. Please don't be afraid, you are amongst friends now."

That voice. He KNEW that voice, it was one that occupied the times before the pain, a time where happiness was actually more than a concept to be mirthlessly scoffed at. Coulson. Phil Coulson, he was speaking to him a slow, cautious tone, with delicacy one might handle shards of glass.

What a fitting analogy, he pondered aimlessly, yes, that described him to the syllable. He was nothing now but the shattered remains of what once reflected a being not so broken, and so pathetically he dismembered. He was dangerous, anyone who dare try take him into their grasp would only end up hurting themselves on his jagged edges.

Fleetingly, he peered around the room to see the eyes boring into his hideous form. Skye leaned heavily against the wall, legs seemingly unable to fulfill their duty as legs as fatigue over took her. She stared at him with tears welling in her eyes, and he could swear he felt the ground trembling beneath him in the wake of her emotions.

Simmons and Fitz clung to each other with the ferocity of one who lives solely on the lifeline of human contact. Beside them stood May and Coulson, both of whom stared at him with dead gazes, all hope and joy leeched from them by guilt's razor sharp teeth.

What once might have torn at his soul, before his endless age of apathy, was the grueling sight of Bobbi's form, shrunk within itself in a wrinkled heap of hunched, bobbing shoulders, Mack's soothing hands rubbing over them, as he stared forward in an absent daze. She was sobbing. His Bobbi, his strong, fearless, relentless Bobbi, had become misery personified, and he once again was the root of her problems.

"S-s-s-o-or-ry," he shook his head. That wasn't right. He needed to convey his regret, his deep despair and guilt to his saviors. These, after all, were the people who just rescued him despite his vile and worthless nature. The very least he could offer them was an audible profession of his plea for forgiveness. "S-suh-ra."

In a whirlwind of movement, Bobbi was suddenly by his side, whispering sweet nothings as she stroked his sticky-with-sweat hair. "Someone go fetch him some ice chips. He's thirsty," she ordered, never once taking her eyes off him.

Even now, after months of never ending threats towards his Bobbi, gruesome descriptions of sickening, vomit inducing things, used as the bone in front of his face to force him into compliance that left the sweet vacancy of head dedicated to memorizing her face now tainted with unabashed fear, she still had the keen ability to read him effortlessly. Once upon a time he might have even smile and cracked a half witted quip.

But in this land of nightmares, such a thing was a foreign concept, and he felt a heaviness weigh down on his eyelids. Slowly, he found himself drifting off into yet another state he had no control of, until the serenity of oblivion consumed him.

"Sleep, hunter. We'll all be here when you wake up," and with the slowing of his ecstatic heart wake, betraying his lack of conciousness, she let the sobs rack their way throughout her body once more.


End file.
